Bonar's Grass Development Centre is our dedicated research facility which analyses trends in current synthetic turf products whilst producing the next generation of key components.
Development
We have the resources to put in the effort needed to keep our product range at top level and to offer the market the next generation of yarns they are looking for. The network between our organization and the market (our customers/ institutions/ laboratories) is very strong, helping us to understand future market needs.
Our official R&D team is based in the Netherlands, where we have our Grass Development Center.Our highly qualified Engineers have all the facilities they need within the Center to cover basic research on new polymer fomula, polymers, pigments, additives to process settings and material behavior during processing.
We are also able to conduct further research into the behavior of any newly developed yarn system, from standard equipment (accepted by the official institutes) to in-house developed test equipment, as well as all the equipment available for standard yarn testing.
The R&D team is working on many different projects simultaneously - based on "tomorrows turfsolutions" and in close cooperation with our preferred partners (on an exclusive basis). One of our most recent successful developments has been the development of the Ultra Technology. The Bonar Yarns Ultra technology was originally developed in our "Grass Development Center", and afterwards fine-tuned by our R&D managers who are located worldwide in order to stay in close contact with the whole market, as well as by our Process Engineers who are located close to our different production plants.
Manufacture
The production plants are located at Scotland, Dundee and in Abu Dhabi.
Over the years, Scotland has seen Jute production be replaced by Polypropylene carpet yarns, and Bonar were pleased to launch the first artificial grass yarns made of fibrulated polypropylene tape in Scotland several years ago.
Over the years, improvements on the processing and new developments in raw materials made next generations of fibrillated artificial grass available, going from standard Polypropylene, to standard polyethylene, to long fibrillation and today producing the FB Ultra products made with an exclusive Ultra polymer mix and Ultra process technology.
In the Abu Dhabi plant we produce our complete range of monofilaments: from sports to landscaping and from our standard monofilaments to our top of the range, such as MN Ultra and MX Relax. In 2010 this new plant, started up with the support of the team of our old production plant based in Belgium Oostende
In both plants Bonar Yarns' product range is being produced by new state of the art machineries.These machines have been partly developed together with our preferred machine suppliers on an exclusive basis.
These new machineries enables Bonar Yarns to supply it's customers with high quality productswhich help the market to fulfill their tomorrow's wishes. Both production plants are managed by a team of production leaders, process engineers and quality managers in order to guarantee our customers the best product level.
The link between the plant and the customer is guaranteed by our product management team, who work closely together with our sales team in order to understand the customers needs.
Testing
Testing new products and processes is an important part of our procedure. We continuously seek the best testing methods which are of course linked with the latest industry standards.
In order to obtain reliable testing results, we not only perform in-house testing, but also work with independent testing institutes such as ISA Sports and Labosports. To obtain certified recommendation we help our customers and agents by providing them with the right, comprehensive testing information. Our close cooperation with our customers and agents and our membership of both the STC and ESTO help us to obtain the right certifications and acknowledgements from organisations such as FIFA (football), RIB (rugby), ITF (tennis) or ICC (cricket) etc.
Our synthetic turf yarn is tested on the following:
- Wear resistance
- Skin friendliness (abrasion)
- UV resistance
- Resilience
- Easy tuftability
- Good ball roll behaviour
However it is not only our yarns which are subject to testing. We also carry out all kinds of testing on the production process itself, especially when new (parts of) machines are installed in order to optimize the process and to ensure a stable and reliable quality product at the end-of-line.
As a yarn supplier we cooperate closely with our tufting customers in order to achieve the best tailor-made solution for the end user. To help achieve this we also make sure our yarns can be tufted easily and that they meet the specific requirements of our customer's tufting machines. Whether it is a new product or a new project, we first start with testing our spools at our customers' base. Delivering tomorrow's yarn solutions- today, we definitely do!
